The Keepers Daughter
Sara had meant it as a challenge, and had heard it come out of her mouth as something closer to a test. She watched the architect — Giulia — drink her tea and consider, and she understood by the end of three seconds that this was not going to be as easy as chasing off the surveyor from Genoa last March.
The Genoese surveyor had looked at his shoes. Giulia looked at the cup.
"I don't know yet," Giulia said. "That's what the first two weeks are for."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning I'll survey the whole structure. Drone work outside, laser scan inside. I'll photograph everything. I'll read whatever paperwork exists — the 1998 restoration file, any earlier drawings, the lantern logs if you have them. And then I'll tell the ministry what the building actually is, before I tell them what it could be."
"That's not how Genoa did it."
Giulia smiled, very slightly. "Genoa in 1998?"
"Genoa in 1998." The man from Genoa in 1998 had been called Colombo, and he had come out on a Friday and been gone by Tuesday and had decided that the keeper's quarters could be stripped back to concrete because the stone was only a veneer. Sara's father had spent two nights writing him a letter that was never sent.
"I don't intend to do it Colombo's way."
Sara put her mug down. She had not given Giulia the surveyor's name. Giulia had read the file.
That was the moment Sara shifted — not dramatically, not all